Many Islamic men beat their wives out of custom and tradition. It’s not even considered deviant. Women are property and have no rights. They are forced to wear burqas. In Denmark, they had to pass a law to be sure that there were enough non-Muslim cab drivers so that when Muslim women called a cab to get to a battered women’s shelter, they did not get a male Muslim cab driver who would promptly return them to their abusive husbands. This is absurd. This is a culture where fathers and brothers kill their daughters and sisters for having sex. In Islamic countries, boys as young as 16 are lynched for being gay. We have to call a spade a spade.

Let’s look at the case of South Africa. In 1962, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 1761 condemning apartheid. But it took until the late 1980’s for the west to mount a resolute challenge to the corrupt system. But we did. Bankers and investors sold South African assets. Athletes and celebrities boycotted the nation. The system fell. Nelson Mandela, who had been imprisoned for 27 years for his resistance became the country’s new president in 1994. We have to ask ourselves: did we only challenge South African apartheid because it was an easy target? Because it was a small country without a worldwide support base? Because it didn’t have the oil that we’re addicted to??

Islamism is in part a system of sexual apartheid. And it affects 20 times as many people as apartheid did. And its cultural traditions are starting to become entrenched in some democracies as muslim immigrants often retreat to their enclaves and choose not to integrate into their host countries. We must support muslims to choose democratic and secular values, and challenge those who advocate the sharia and religious oppression.

Have the bombs of radical Islam made us forget our principles? Do those same principles go up in smoke every time we fill up our SUV’s? Can we justify having such condescension toward moderate muslims who are caught up in this barbarianism? Will we deny them our solidarity and moral support because we think—-well, that’s just their culture? Will we leave Islamic women to their fate at the hands of the imams, religious police, or abusive husbands? We would never tolerate this in our own society, so someone please explain to me why should we tolerate it intellectually? I think sometimes too much tolerance is simply cowardice, and frankly—nothing but intellectual laziness.